That does not contradict what I was saying. The Constitution was going to have to be ratified in each separate state in order to become valid. There wasn't going to be a grand national ratification convention. Nor were state governments and state boundaries to be eradicated. But the acts of ratification did create or affirm a federated nation and an American people, and a convention in one state breaking with the Constitution and the nation was bound to be problematic.
All of this was debated at length a century and a half ago. The one thing we can say for sure is that there was no simple answer to the question of secession. Under those circumstances it was necessary to proceed circumspectly and with the involvement and consent of all parties concerned, not rashly, unilaterally, and in rage. Lawyering and case building now doesn't change the fact that there was no consensus and no obvious answer, other than perhaps cooperation of North and South to achieve a solution to the impasse.
I must have missed that. Last I checked, someone raised a massive army and went down and killed other people who objected. Perhaps you and I have different understanding of the word "debate."
One cannot seriously believe the break from the thousand year old government of the United Kingdom was reasonable, but a break from a four score and seven year old coalition of states is not.
The idea is silly.
doesn't change the fact that there was no consensus and no obvious answer, other than perhaps cooperation of North and South to achieve a solution to the impasse.
Ah, but there was a consensus. The Consensus of the Northern states was to let the "errant sisters" go in peace.
Lincoln deliberately tossed a monkey wrench into the peace by sending a war flee to force the Union member into the Mouth of Charleston Harbor.
I think the union of such diverse and competing interests as it was from 1800 (or earlier) to 1860 would have eventually broken apart whether secession was legal (psst, it was) or not.
I am reminded of what the visitor from France, Alexis de Tocqueville, said in his book, Democracy in America [my emphasis below]:
However strong a government may be, it cannot easily escape from the consequences of a principle which it has once admitted as the foundation of its constitution. The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the states; and these, in uniting together, have not forfeited their sovereignty, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the states chose to withdraw its name from the contract, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so, and the Federal government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly, either by force or by right. In order to enable the Federal government easily to conquer the resistance that may be offered to it by any of its subjects, it would be necessary that one or more of them should be specially interested in the existence of the Union, as has frequently been the case in the history of confederations.
If it be supposed that among the states that are united by the federal tie there are some which exclusively enjoy the principal advantages of union, or whose prosperity entirely depends on the duration of that union, it is unquestionable that they will always be ready to support the central government in enforcing the obedience of the others. But the government would then be exerting a force not derived from itself, but from a principle contrary to its nature. States form confederations in order to derive equal advantages from their union; and in the case just alluded to, the Federal government would derive its power from the unequal distribution of those benefits among the states.
If one of the federated states acquires a preponderance sufficiently great to enable it to take exclusive possession of the central authority, it will consider the other states as subject provinces and will cause its own supremacy to be respected under the borrowed name of the sovereignty of the Union. Great things may then be done in the name of the Federal government, but in reality that government will have ceased to exist.
de Tocqueville was pretty perceptive in 1831. I see some de Tocqueville predictions coming true in the Civil War:
First red bold area above. All four items are true. He was just reporting how things were in 1831.
Second and Third red bold areas above. The North was especially interested in retaining the Union. The South provided more than 70 percent of the value of the exports of the US, which enabled the US to import a like value without a large balance of payments problem. There was no personal income tax, so tariff income from imports paid the expenses of government, a government that had greatly increased the national debt in the few years since the 1857 tariff became effective. The government was almost out of money in early 1861. Northern port cities were dependent on the import business. Northern manufacturers and suppliers sold over 200 million dollars of products to the South, often at tariff-raised prices. The manufacturers made more money, Northern workers got jobs, and the South was being "fleeced" as the New Orleans Picayune newspaper said. If the South left the Union, many of the benefits the North received from the South decreased or disappeared.
Fourth red bold area above. The North was treating the South like a colony. "It has been estimated that New York received forty percent of all cotton revenues since the city supplied insurance, shipping, and financing services and New York merchants sold goods to Southern planters." [Source]. Even before the 1861 Morrill Tariff, the 1857 US tariff was transferring many millions of dollars from the South to the North to pay tariff protected prices for Northern manufactured goods. When Lincoln finally allowed the US Congress to reconvene in July after he had invaded the South, spent money on things Congress had not authorized it for, expanded the size and extended the service of the military, pronounced a blockade of Southern ports, and gotten us into war (things he didn't have the power to do in the Constitution). When Congress reconvened, it passed resolutions that said "this war is ... not waged upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those States; but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution, and to preserve the Union.
Dadgum, that de Tocqueville was prescient.